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A report that tech behemoth Amazon is unlikely to pay federal income tax for 2018 recently set off a firestorm. How could a company with record U.S. profits for the year avoid paying up while most Americans can’t?

On the last page of a nine-page tax plan that calls for slashing business rates, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans proposed a little-noticed, brand-new tax that may hit companies like Apple Inc. and Pfizer Inc.

President Donald Trump and Republican leaders launched an urgent effort to get a major legislative win this year, announcing a long-awaited tax plan that will immediately set off a fight over how much top earners should pay.

America’s multinational corporations are growing grudgingly resigned to paying U.S. taxes on $2 trillion in profits they have stashed abroad. “I think there is a recognition that part of any tax reform will be a taxation on the money that’s overseas,” said Mark Weinberger, the CEO of EY, one of the world’s largest professional services companies. Weinberger serves as tax committee chairman of the Business Roundtable, which represents chief executives of some of the country’s biggest companies, including several in Minnesota. He briefed reporters last week on business tax reform. Weinberger said the roundtable has not taken a position on White House and congressional proposals to tax once-sheltered foreign profits of U.S. corporations.

Legislators, corporate lobbyists and President Barack Obama have been at odds for years over how to handle the taxation of foreign profits by U.S. multinational corporations. The U.S. is one of the few countries that uses a worldwide system to tax corporate profits made abroad. Companies are required to pay a "repatriation tax" if foreign profits are moved stateside. Many corporations and Republican congressmen support a move to a territorial system under which foreign subsidiaries' repatriated profits would be exempt from such a tax. The president, who has proposed a one-time, 14% tax on the approximately $2 trillion in profits accumulated abroad by U.S. multinational firms, supports taxing foreign profits independent of a corporation's decision to repatriate them.

When Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law last September a dramatic expansion of the state’s film and TV tax credit program, it was in many ways just the start of the new effort to lure production back to California. On Thursday, the California Film Commission unanimously passed draft regulations that will govern how the $330 million in annual tax credits will be disbursed. The regulations now go to the state Office of Administrative Law for final approval, so there still could be changes. The legislation more than tripled the amount of tax credits available to movie and TV projects, as well as expanded eligibility to include big-budget feature films, one-hour drama series and TV pilots. But perhaps the biggest change was in the way applicants will be awarded credits.

Yesterday, February 2, 2015, the Finance and Tax Committee of the Florida Senate vote 6 – 0 to move forward to increase the amount of income corporations can exempt for their state income taxes in SB 138. The bill would also increase the amount of income that is exempt from the franchise tax that is imposed on banks and savings associations. SB 138 has an identical bill in the Florida House as H 0049 and is moving just as quickly as in the Florida Senate. The bill was introduced by Republican Senator Dorothy Hukill of District 8. Under current Florida law, corporations can exempt $50,000 of their net income from the Florida Corporate Income Tax. Under SB 138, that number will be increased to $75,000 corporations can exempt.